


Every New Beginning Comes from Some Other Beginning’s End

by Curator



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Episode: s07e25 Endgame (Star Trek: Voyager), Gen, Home is where the baggage is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-22 12:48:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22049584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curator/pseuds/Curator
Summary: A drabble for each member of the senior staff in the seconds after Endgame concludes.
Comments: 34
Kudos: 37





	1. Tom Paris

**Author's Note:**

> I think the Voyager writers did the right thing in bringing the crew home. I also think getting home would be a shock, not an immediate celebration, with the bad outweighing the good for varying amounts of time depending on the character. And, yes, the title is from the Semisonic song.

Flying is the state of in-between.

Between starbases.

Planets.

People.

Tom isn’t flying, he’s running as he aches with in-between.

He is a father who hasn’t met his daughter. 

His rank is a field commission on a ship that has left the field.

And he may have to go back to prison.

He feels a course change under his feet and wonders if the new heading is the same one he’s set for most of seven years. 

Tom slows to a walk, then leans against a bulkhead. On deck five, in-between sections twenty-one and twenty-two alpha, Tom struggles to breathe.


	2. B’Elanna Torres

She has always bristled at attention toward her own forehead ridges, yet she stares at Miral’s.

On _Voyager_ it could be fine, but, in the Alpha Quadrant, people will expect Miral to like gagh, bloodwine, and opera— not engines, manifolds, and relays.

Or whatever the hell she wants.

The baby gazes at her with unfocused eyes and the EMH clears his throat. B’Elanna knows she should speak, so she murmurs, “I’m so happy,” and it’s a lie. 

Because fighting for herself was easy compared with her shivers for this child born into a quadrant that thinks it already knows her.


	3. Seven of Nine

The planet is no more resonant on the viewscreen than at any other point in her four years of attempting to consider the unremarkable world her home. 

Seven of Nine tells herself she is not enthused nor is she trepidatious.

She is simply a member of the crew of _Voyager_ , the collective that shall soon cease to be.

Thinking like a Borg can help her be strong, the human tells herself, even as the emotions she has tried to productively explore begin to trickle down her cheeks.

It’s not fear or happiness or relief or worry or grief. 

It’s everything.


	4. The Doctor

He’s glad B’Elanna is with him. If someone from Starfleet beams in and wants to decompile his program, she can fight as an engineer and as his friend.

He clears his throat, intending to thank her for maintaining his program for all these years, but she murmurs, “I’m so happy.” 

Since it’s medically unwise to intrude on mother-child bonding, he waits.

He envisions Starfleet seizing his mobile emitter, shutting down his subroutines, studying him like a photonic lab rat.

 _Voyager_ was a unique time, he tells himself, but even ageless holograms can squint in the dawn of a new era.


	5. Harry Kim

The planet on the viewscreen is green and brown and blue.

Green. 

Harry was fresh out of the academy when he left, his clarinet forgotten in his childhood bedroom. “We are very proud of you,” his father had said as his mother hugged him. 

But Harry has matured from green to brown, a strong trunk and wide limbs on the sapling transplanted to the Delta Quadrant.

Can he continue to bloom under the glare of his parents’ blindingly bright attention?

Harry taps his console to hide the estimated time of arrival to McKinley Station.

He flinches from pangs of blue.


	6. Tuvok

Surak once stated the Vulcan concept of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations entails no end.

But Tuvok has surmised an end is approaching.

Yet, he has lived his life according to Surak’s philosophies of logic.

It is logical to alleviate his condition with the fal-tor-voh mind meld, likely with his daughter who will then know everything about his time on _Voyager_.

His friendship with young Ensign Kim.

His annoyance regarding Neelix.

His grief for Kes.

Were he human, Tuvok supposes he would feel relief his symptoms have not deteriorated his logic to the point where embarrassment would override medical necessity.


	7. Chakotay

He’s been polite, but Chakotay has never liked Earth.

His ancestors were forced from their land time and time again until they finally fled those who showed them no compassion.

He’d thought of this when he dropped his commbadge on Admiral Nimembeh’s desk, vowing to no longer serve an organization that allowed Cardassians to take colonies the Federation should have protected. 

He sets a course for McKinley Station but doesn’t say “yes, ma’am” because Chakotay won’t let his voice to betray him now, not when he should be grateful for seven years of being far from this place of pain.


	8. Kathryn Janeway

She doesn’t feel the chair that has become part nest, part cage.

She doesn’t hear taps against consoles.

She can’t even see the planet on the viewscreen through vision blurred by unshed tears.

There is so much Kathryn Janeway will not miss about these seven years of soul-crushing responsibility.

But she already aches for Harry and Seven’s passion for discovery, Tom’s grin at a pompous alien’s introduction, Chakotay and Tuvok’s thoughtful counsel, B’Elanna and the Doctor’s consistent brilliance. 

But she promised she would bring them back.

And her chest fills with pride that her crew can finally be at home.


End file.
